Status
Available
Genres
Publication
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
Description
A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil-literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul-it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Quixada
You know, I began a try at this review writing about Iago in Othello and the nature of evil.
And about ennui and apathy.
And that the answer is: nothing.
And how I felt deep empathy for Maria.
And then I deleted it all.
This is my review: This novel depressed the fuck out of me.
That, and giving it
And about ennui and apathy.
And that the answer is: nothing.
And how I felt deep empathy for Maria.
And then I deleted it all.
This is my review: This novel depressed the fuck out of me.
That, and giving it
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four stars, should sum it up. Show Less
LibraryThing member ToniApicelli
Although I read this many years ago, I remember well that it struck me there was no one else who described the empty space in a soul as well as Joan Didion. We understand a character more through what is not said than what is.
LibraryThing member missmarymode
A fantastic novel depicting the horror associated with a life of substance and history subjected to a society which values superficiality and hypocrisy. Maria Wyeth is a young model/actress in LA, married, for a time anyway, to a marginally successful director. The first few chapters of the novel
One should not confuse Didion's journalistic, masculine writing style with an anti-feminist point of view. Maria may be an empty vessel, but it is far more the fault of her surroundings than her own tendencies. Rather it is Didion's sensitivity to Maria's internal "life" which makes her most enchanting a female writer. She compresses metaphysical revelations into seemingly palatable statements, and the reader is advised not to be fooled by short chapters, but to ruminate for a while over every composition. Life itself is what continues us, presents the reason for us to continue to exist, despite our best intentions..
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provide us with insight into individual characters views of Maria's ultimate state, then the novel moves into the complete story according to Maria's point of view. One should not confuse Didion's journalistic, masculine writing style with an anti-feminist point of view. Maria may be an empty vessel, but it is far more the fault of her surroundings than her own tendencies. Rather it is Didion's sensitivity to Maria's internal "life" which makes her most enchanting a female writer. She compresses metaphysical revelations into seemingly palatable statements, and the reader is advised not to be fooled by short chapters, but to ruminate for a while over every composition. Life itself is what continues us, presents the reason for us to continue to exist, despite our best intentions..
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LibraryThing member daizylee
Sadly, this feels a little dated, the aging, rather off-her-rocker former film star whose life begins to spiral out of control. And the style also doesn't feel as fresh as it once did.
LibraryThing member markfinl
Maria Wyeth is a minor actress whose life is disintegrating in Hollywood, Las Vegas and the desert between the two cities. Play It As It Lays is a bleak elliptical novel. The empty spaces in the novel tell more of the story than the narration.
LibraryThing member wrk1
concise and precise story about loneliness in hollywood. A serious novel, it is older kin to "The Loneliness of Prime Numbers," another close look at severely emotionally-disturbed individuals.
LibraryThing member araridan
I picked this book up from the library because of a tag line comparing Didion to Nathanael West. I think the similarity comes from both of their depictions of Hollywood in unfavorable light, however I think West focuses more on the absurdity and dark humor, while Didion's novel tends to point out
This is the Hollywood of the early 1970s. Driving around freeways, cocktail parties, drugs, sham marriages, one night stands with nobody actors. Maria is a very unhappy woman. Sometimes she can't seem to find any reason to care about anything; other times she's crying for no direct reason, or just observing the bullshit around her. She's a former actress, apparently getting too old, but it's not like she wanted to be an actress much in the first place. She's not an easy character to like, but I think easy to imagine her state of mind and her environment. A very stark book.
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the emptiness and depravity.This is the Hollywood of the early 1970s. Driving around freeways, cocktail parties, drugs, sham marriages, one night stands with nobody actors. Maria is a very unhappy woman. Sometimes she can't seem to find any reason to care about anything; other times she's crying for no direct reason, or just observing the bullshit around her. She's a former actress, apparently getting too old, but it's not like she wanted to be an actress much in the first place. She's not an easy character to like, but I think easy to imagine her state of mind and her environment. A very stark book.
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LibraryThing member lucybrown
I read this in the early 1980s shortly after I had graduated college. I can't give a really great review except that the book has stuck with me so I want to say something. The premise did not sound promising, but more like the soap opera themed books I avoided; second rate movie actress and model
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has affairs, marries, divorces, drinks, feels bored and hopeless, cracks up... However, in Didion's hands the story packed a wallop from which I am still reeling. Didion dissects the ephemeral, hapless Hollywood life in which glamor is the grail; ennui the general model. It's an ugly world, but Didion writes beautifully about it. Maria is self-absorbed, self-pitying, tragically passive. Why should anyone care about such a woman? Well, I did. This is a heartbreaking book with just a shimmer of hope. Show Less
LibraryThing member lucybrown
I read this in the early 1980s shortly after I had graduated college. I can't give a really great review except that the book has stuck with me so I want to say something. The premise did not sound promising, but more like the soap opera themed books I avoided; second rate movie actress and model
Show More
has affairs, marries, divorces, drinks, feels bored and hopeless, cracks up... However, in Didion's hands the story packed a wallop from which I am still reeling. Didion dissects the ephemeral, hapless Hollywood life in which glamor is the grail; ennui the general model. It's an ugly world, but Didion writes beautifully about it. Maria is self-absorbed, self-pitying, tragically passive. Why should anyone care about such a woman? Well, I did. This is a heartbreaking book with just a shimmer of hope. Show Less
LibraryThing member Kristelh
Review: This is a story about “nothing”. Set in the sixties and mostly hollywood, the story tells about a young woman’s journey into madness. There is nothing happy about this book and thankfully it is short. I wanted to read it because I loved Ms Didion’s book, A Year of Magical Thinking
First Words: What makes Iago evil? some people ask.
Quotes: One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.
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which was a memoir. This was a novel. Still, Ms Didion’s writing is delivered. I like her writing. This story is told in every increasing sparseness as the protagonist slips further and further into depression or madness. I would compare this to The Yellow Wallpaper and The Bell Jar. First Words: What makes Iago evil? some people ask.
Quotes: One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.
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LibraryThing member danlai
This book is a quick read, which is probably a good thing as you don’t want to wallow in these emotions for too long. These are the emotions of feeling nothing but emptiness, or perhaps the feelings of hating everything, hating yourself. Imagine The Bell Jar meets The Great Gatsby, set in
Didion’s style is fragmented and to the point. When you are depressed, you never want expand on much anyways. Didion presents a lot of information at once, which will begin to make sense as you progress in the novel. The book deserves a reread to understand everything fully, but for me that is going to have to wait. I don’t want to spend too much time in this discomforting world of Didion’s. However, I will definitely, definitely revisit Didion.
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Hollywood, and then decimate the prose to its bare essentials. It isn’t going to be pretty.Didion’s style is fragmented and to the point. When you are depressed, you never want expand on much anyways. Didion presents a lot of information at once, which will begin to make sense as you progress in the novel. The book deserves a reread to understand everything fully, but for me that is going to have to wait. I don’t want to spend too much time in this discomforting world of Didion’s. However, I will definitely, definitely revisit Didion.
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LibraryThing member sparemethecensor
Stunning, arresting, wonderful. So beautifully written. Captures a moment in time for this woman, but also for her population of women. The ennui in Didion's novel may be mistaken by some to be the same as any ennui in any modern novel -- Cheever, Yates, Franzen -- but it feels different to me. To
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me, it's furious. Highly recommended. Show Less
LibraryThing member lethalmauve
Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays is a quick read but it burdens like an anvil with its infectious existential despair after. Maria, an actress, finds herself swimming in worn out Hollywood memories whilst lying in a hospital bed, what's left of its magnetising spark and glamour, and hedonism which
Play It As It Lays is a sad charade of living. Its people have the luxury for everything yet they have nothing. They take anything as a panacea to plaster the malady of emptiness and longing underneath a critical yet debauch society. Along the lights and sounds of Las Vegas hides a bellow for help whilst the thirst of wanting floods the dry Mojave Desert.
Didion writes with high precision and lucidity; its relevance scarily familiar in the present still. The struggles of being a woman, a mother, and an actress embrace its rough pages. She performs an accurate autopsy of our society dead enough not to care about its nauseating norms and impossible expectations. It is an utterly devastating story of surviving day by day with eyes closed whilst hoping for a better tomorrow. Please prepare yourself for the anvil.
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are only a temporary reprieve from its monstrosity: the transient fame, the disillusioned promises of films and acting, a rocky and adulterous marriage, a sick daughter, the fake friends, and the ultimate expiration date brought by age and trend. Maria's life is dramatic and tragic like the movies. With the lack of creative control and voice both at home and work they snake their way to Maria's life. She eventually lacks control in any part of it. She is looking for purpose, for meaning, anything to make life worth clinging to yet it's devoid of anything. What she has is a series of sexual and superficial encounters as she tethers herself into anything and anyone that alleviates any part of her that aches. Soon, we learn more, the how's, the cries, the tries but not really the why's.Play It As It Lays is a sad charade of living. Its people have the luxury for everything yet they have nothing. They take anything as a panacea to plaster the malady of emptiness and longing underneath a critical yet debauch society. Along the lights and sounds of Las Vegas hides a bellow for help whilst the thirst of wanting floods the dry Mojave Desert.
Didion writes with high precision and lucidity; its relevance scarily familiar in the present still. The struggles of being a woman, a mother, and an actress embrace its rough pages. She performs an accurate autopsy of our society dead enough not to care about its nauseating norms and impossible expectations. It is an utterly devastating story of surviving day by day with eyes closed whilst hoping for a better tomorrow. Please prepare yourself for the anvil.
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LibraryThing member ntempest
Didion's spare language always makes me think of empty highways through the middle of the desert. This book is a hard read emotionally because the protagonist is so dead inside herself. I first read this years ago, then reread recently after moving to the Los Angeles area, and I find it much more
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affecting now that I have a sense of this place, even though Didion's work addresses a different time as well. An intriguing depiction of an era and a region. Show Less
LibraryThing member bibleblaster
This was bleak beyond even my imagining of it based on reviews and references here and there. I missed the insights that pepper her later memoirs, but I suppose that's to be expected. We're all a little more reflective as we age. Definitely an important work "of a time."
LibraryThing member miriamparker
This might be another perfect book. I read it long ago and then re-read it recently and was suprised at how much I remembered. How vivid those scenes of driving around in California aimless and miserable were. Joan Didion is GOOD at misery.
LibraryThing member 391
This was the first book of Didion's I've ever read, and I am so excited to pick up her other books. The underlying currents of depression and disconnect are so heartbreaking, and the overall story is a
LibraryThing member bespectacledbug
The soothing tempo of Didion’s beautifully crafted prose effortlessly locates the depressive glamour of 1960’s Hollywood for one young woman. Available through nuances of the quotidian, the life of a moderately successful actress and her famous director husband manages to brilliantly reflect a
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social status within modern America that looks quite different on the other side of the silver screen. A certain unease permeates the overall emotional current within much of this great american author’s fiction and this works to present the delicate balance of human relationships on an individual and societal level as they are tested by the politics of sex, wealth and success. (Film to match the mood: Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt 1963). Show Less
LibraryThing member DanielSTJ
This was an amazing book! Short snippets of life fueled with the appeal of motion pictures and the breakdown of a relationship. I really felt it offered a lot to me as a reader and that the novel holds a wide appeal for anyone interested in serious, meaningful literature. A commendable job!
LibraryThing member oogumboogum
A stunning overview of America's lost generation .
LibraryThing member ljhliesl
This is like the Yellow Wallpaper meets Hills Like White Elephants meets Day of the Locust.
LibraryThing member daisyq
On the basis of this, I prefer Didion's non-fiction. This was closest in tone to the essay "Slouching Toward Bethlehem", which was probably my least favourite in that collection.
This book is very much of its time, late sixties, and it was hard for me to relate to the despair of characters whose
I liked the style: it's fast-paced (some chapters aren't even a full page), spare, and conveys the despair and ennui of the characters incredibly well. It was just that I didn't always feel it was earned.
Some of the language is of its time, I found the references tofaggots jarring. My 70s library copy also uses retarded not once but twice on the dust jacket, but this wasn't in the book itself.
This book is very much of its time, late sixties, and it was hard for me to relate to the despair of characters whose
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'problems' are largely self-imposed. I thought first section from Maria's view point and the insights into that throughout were some of the strongest parts.I liked the style: it's fast-paced (some chapters aren't even a full page), spare, and conveys the despair and ennui of the characters incredibly well. It was just that I didn't always feel it was earned.
Some of the language is of its time, I found the references to
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LibraryThing member viviennestrauss
This was like reading a John Cassavetes film.
LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
Ms Didion is a fine stylist. I enjoyed this account of a modern Woman getting on with her life as she finds it. While her circumstances are discouraging, yet she does persist.
LibraryThing member margaretfield
story of a woman whose marriage falls apart, gets an abortion, has a lot of affairs and journeys into mental problems
Subjects
Awards
Notable Books List (1970)
Language
Original publication date
1970
Physical description
xvii, 213 p.; 21 cm
ISBN
9780374529949
Local notes
fiction